1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method for synchronizing and updating website bookmarks on multiple computer devices. In particular, the present invention provides a method for multiple computer devices to share and update bookmark information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many people today use multiple Internet navigation devices to access websites or Internet databases. For example, a person may use a desktop computer, laptop computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), and cell phone to access the same, frequently visited websites. To enable convenient access to these websites, website locations (e.g. universal resource locators, or URLs) are stored as bookmarks on each computer or cell phone. In the present state of the art, these bookmarks are stored and maintained separately on each Internet enabled device. Hence, when a website or database URL changes, or if other changes are made to stored bookmarks, the new bookmark information must be separately updated on each Internet enabled device. For example, a user may have to separately and manually update bookmarks on a computer and cell phone. This can be a troublesome inconvenience to a person that regularly uses 2, 3 or more Internet navigation devices.
This problem also occurs in corporate or governmental intranets when bookmarks (e.g. pointing to Internet websites or internal database locations) are updated. In this case, the bookmarks on each computer in the intranet (e.g. possibly hundreds of computers), will need to be updated with the new bookmark data.
Sometimes, a computer user can avoid the problem of updating bookmarks by accessing bookmarks on a remote, networked device that has the most recent bookmark files. However, this solution is manual and therefore time-consuming, and may not be possible if the device with the most recent bookmark data is unavailable (e.g. off-line or powered down), if the user incorrectly recollects the device with the most recent bookmark data or the bookmark data, even though most recently updated, is not complete such as in the case where different changes are made from different computer devices.
What is needed is a simple, automated (or semi-automated) method for updating bookmarks on a plurality of devices. Such a method could assure that any participating devices have access to the most current bookmark data. Such a method could be used by individuals that use several Internet enabled devices, and by large corporate networks to synchronize and update bookmark files.